Texas Beyond History

Brownsville-Barril

The Rio Grande Delta has many wide, shallow waterways
ringed by extensive tidal zones. Most of the archeological sites are
found on stabilized dunes and levees overlooking the marshes, bays,
and river channels.

The peoples of the Rio Grande Delta were hunters, fishers,
shellfish collectors, and plant gatherers who moved frequently
as the seasons, tides, and food supplies dictated.

Conch shell gorget with notched edges and
a cross pattern formed by half-drilled holes. Similar artifacts
occur in Archaic burial contexts at inland sites.

Shell-bead Making: The manufacture
of round shell beads starts with "blanks," pieces
of shell that have been broken or slightly rounded, such as
the objects on the top row. On the middle row are roughed-out
shell beads with drilled holes for suspension onto a necklace
strand. Once the drilled beads were ground flat, they were
tightly strung and the edges were ground and smoothed, strand-by-strand,
creating uniform beads.

These shell projectile tips were fashioned out of the columella,
or central column, of the conch shell. In the Rio Grande Delta,
shell was used to make many tools that were ordinarily made
of stone in inland areas of Texas.

Olive shells were also used for bead-making. The spire and lower
part of the shell were cut off and ground down to create a suspension
hole through the central whorl.

This is a photograph of a water jar traded
into the Rio Grande Delta area from the region of Tampico,
Mexico. Note the offset looped handles to aid in strapping
the vessel to one's back with rope or cordage. The jar was
found in pieces and has been glued back together. Much of
the painted design has faded due to exposure to the winds
and sand before the vessel pieces were discovered.

The Brownsville-Barril complex or culture is the name
that archeologists have given to the remains left by the little-known
Indian groups who occupied the Rio Grande Delta at the extreme southern
tip of Texas during the time period of A.D. 1100-1700. The low-lying
tropical delta area was one of the last parts of northeastern Mexico
to be explored and settled by the Spanish. They did not turn their
attention to the Rio Grande Delta until 1747, about 150 years after
they first established towns in Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. The mid-eighteenth
century accounts suggest that as many as 50 named Indian groups
lived in the Rio Grande Delta. Based on the archeological record
of the preceding centuries, the basic lifeway seen by the Spanish
when they entered the region was little different from that of the
later prehistoric peoples. There is little evidence of Archaic and
earlier occupations in the Rio Grande Delta probably because earlier
evidence has been buried by flood deposits or destroyed by hurricanes.

The peoples of the Rio Grande Delta were hunters,
fishers, shellfish collectors, and plant gatherers who moved frequently
as the seasons, tides, and food supplies dictated. They lived in
a semi-arid, semi-tropical environment and camped on small rises
along the many bays, lagoons, oxbow lakes, and estuaries. From these
waterways they harvested shellfish and fish for food and seashells
as raw material. The Rio Grande Delta is almost devoid of natural
stoneinstead it is built of mud carried down the river by
floods and sand pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico by hurricanes
and strong currents. Having no flint or other stone, the Brownsville-Barril
people used seashells to fashion an amazing variety of shell tools
and ornaments including projectile points shaped from conch shell,
carved conch shell pendants, olive shell tinklers/bells, freshwater
and marine shell beads, and many other tool forms.

These shell artifacts were traded to more settled
peoples further to the south in northeastern Mexico along the periphery
of Mesoamerica, the great heartland of civilization that stretched
from northern Mexico to Costa Rica. In exchange, the Brownsville-Barril
peoples received exotic items including pottery, jade, and obsidian
that are rarely found in Texas beyond the Rio Grand Delta. In fact
this is one of the most interesting archeological questions about
the area: What was the nature of trade and contact between these
nomadic delta peoples and the much more sophisticated cultures to
the south?

The people of the Rio Grande Delta were also distinctive
in the manner in which they buried their dead. Individuals were
buried in tightly flexed positions, and graves were located away
from living areas. The deceased was accompanied by offerings such
as shell beads and pendants, animal and human bone awls, and bone
beads or tubes used as jewelry. With some burials, red pigment powder
was strewn over the burial. Others included Mesoamerican goods such
as prehistoric pottery vessels from the Tampico, Mexico region,
obsidian (volcanic glass) arrow points from sources in central Mexico,
and greenstone (jadeite) jewelry, also from Mexico.

Much of what is known about the Brownsville-Barril
complex is due to the efforts of a civil engineer and draftsman
from Brownsville, Texas. From 1917 to 1941, Andrew Eliot Anderson,
took extensive notes, drafted maps, and collected distinctive artifacts
from archeological sites of the Rio Grande Delta and Laguna Madre
of coastal south Texas and northeastern Mexico. After World War
II, the area was drastically transformed by land clearing, agricultural
modification, and urban development. Today most of the sites that
Anderson visited have been destroyed. The A. E. Anderson collection,
now housed at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, is a
crucial research resource.

The Rio Grande Delta of today bears scarce resemblance
to its appearance prior to the twentieth century. The great river
has been reduced to a trickle by upstream dams and heavy agricultural
demand. The fertile soils and mix of marsh, waterways, and raised
areas have been homogenizedthe smaller waterways filled in,
the clay dunes flattened, and the area covered by expanses of agricultural
fields, orchards, and urban areas. The majority of the archeological
record has been destroyed, particularly the most fragile and most
visible materials that were once common on and near the surface.
The best potential for learning more about the Brownsville-Barril
complex is a combination of renewed ethnohistoric researchcombing
the Spanish archives for eyewitness accounts of the native peoples
of the Rio Grande deltaand analyses of the existing collections
and notes.

Credits

Today the Anderson Collection is being studied anew
by UT-Austin graduate student William J. Wagner, III, who prepared
this exhibit. Wagner is looking at the shell technology and how
the tool and ornament-making industry was connected to the lives
of those who lived in the Rio Grande Delta as well as the distant
connections to the Huastec and other Mesoamerican peoples.

Salinas, Martin
1990 Indians of the Rio Grande Delta: Their Role in the History
of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico. University of Texas
Press, Austin.
[Out of print, but best source on ethnohistory of region.]

Wagner, William J., III
2000 A Preliminary Analysis of Huastec Ceramics Found in Brownsville-Barril
Complex Sites. Unpublished Master's Report. Department of Anthropology,
The University of Texas at Austin.

Prior to the mid-twentieth century, the
Rio Grande Delta's extensive tidal zones, marshes, and periodic
influxes of fresh water, created very productive estuaries.

Click images to enlarge

Everyday tools, such as these beveled scrapers,
were also fashioned out of conch shell.

The larger of these square beads may have
been worn as gorgets suspended on a cord over the chest or
neck. These are made of conch and clam shell.

Stone pipes such as this specimen are rare
finds in the Rio Grande Delta. Similar artifacts are widely
distributed in Texas, although never common.

These small triangular arrow points made
out of chert are known as Cameron points. Chert was not available
in the Rio Grande Delta and had to be brought or traded in.

These pendants were also made of conch
shell columellas.

A copy of the water jar, with a reconstruction
of the painted black design.